There is a need for a new type of distance communications system that achieves “telepresence” which is commonly understood to be a perception of presence of a person from a distant location. Telepresence covers a broad range of display and interactive technologies. Most configurations display a flat image on a screen or a monitor. The flat images produced by these products and display systems do not create the perception of the presence of the transmitted person in the three-dimensional setting of the receiving location.
The perception of the presence of a person within a room can be a powerful form of communication. Observers respond differently to an effective display of a life-size person in a three-dimensional setting compared to the common appearance of a person on a flat screen, such as normal television. In order to achieve this perception, the image of the person should not be contained by the appearance of the frame of a screen. This can be accomplished by having the distant person captured against a black background and superimposing the image with a backdrop and room setting appearing behind the person. With the proper balance of light on the backdrop and room setting, the image of the person can appear to be present in free space in front of the background.
An additional feature in achieving effective telepresence is the perception of eye contact. It is well known that eye contact can be simulated by positioning a camera on the opposite side of a two-way mirror so that it matches the reflected view of the line of sight of the displayed person from the distant location.
The combination of eye contact and the appearance in a three-dimensional setting were presented in the “Communications System” by White WO 01/11880 patent application filed Aug. 10, 1999 and published Feb. 15, 2001 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/049,253 filed Jul. 24, 2000, both incorporated herein by reference. These previous configurations have reflected an image of a life-size person so that it is superimposed into a three-dimensional setting. This setting, which is viewed through the two-way mirror, could incorporate a chair and background to give the perception that the person is in the room with the audience. This configuration requires that a large amount of space is dedicated to the display system, however.
Most prior art systems are large and bulky and, hence, cannot physically fit into most conference rooms. Thus, they are not acceptable for the majority of applications. Furthermore, the appearance of the transmitted person into a room setting poses many problems. Since the image of the transmitted person is superimposed into the room setting, any light surfaces or objects in the room setting will be visible through the image of the person. This will result in a “ghost” effect for the person. In order to control this visual effect, all of the background needs to be illuminated to an exact level of brightness. It is impractical to specially set the light levels and to select dark colors for all objects in the room for all applications other than theatrical settings. As a result, this configuration is generally unacceptable for normal business usage.
Even with producing custom room settings for these reflected image display systems, they have a fundamental problem caused by the location of the displayed image. Since the image of the person is reflected by the two-way mirror, the image display system is positioned between the observer and the mirror. As a result, the image on the image display system could be directly viewed by the observer. This would break the illusion of the presence of the person as seen in the reflection of the image in the two-way mirror. There are various methods for minimizing the view of the display system, such as using a micro louver film to block the image from the observation zone. However, these techniques are not totally effective and darken the image to half or less of its brightness. Darkening the image can be a serious problem in that the two-way mirror reflects only 30% to 50% percent of the light, causing the image to be only a small fraction of the brightness of the image display system. Due to the resulting low brightness of the image, the quality is unsatisfactory.
There is a substantial interest in a new type of distance communication that achieves “telepresence”, which is commonly understood to be a perception of presence of a person from a distant location. Numerous configurations display life-size images of people transmitted from distant locations with cameras positioned at eye level height between the screens. However, a more effective form of telepresence achieves eye contact through the use of a two-way mirror. In this eye contact configuration the two-way mirror is used to match the camera alignment with the eye level of the display of the transmitted participant. Various configurations of eye contact devices have been commonly known for over twenty years.
There has become a need to develop a telepresence workstation specifically for a single person to be captured on camera for transmission to a remote location. Previous configurations have been made for desktop solutions, which have had inherent problems. In particular, the camera is so close to the person that a wide angle view is required to capture an image of the upper body of the person. In this close position this wide angle of view creates a distorted perspective on the person. This problem is particularly obvious when a person reaches forward with a hand.
The distortion of the person can be eliminated by moving the camera further back from the person. However, this could make the arrangement of the eye contact system excessively bulky. For many applications there is not enough available floor space to accommodate this required depth.
One application that is of great importance is for call centers, which are a major business around the world. There is great potential for using the staff of the call centers to achieve better communication with customers by using telepresence instead of voice only. In this application the call center staff can connect to dedicated telepresence communications systems located in stores, public venues or offices. However, call centers usually have a large number of workstations on a floor and space per person is limited. Large telepresence systems using currently available configurations would not fit within the floor plans of these call centers.